Eustis city leaders are considering repealing a 20-year-old ordinance that bans gas-powered boats on Lake Gracie, a change prompted by a new Florida law that strips local governments of the power to regulate watercraft based on fuel type. The small, spring-fed lake has been off-limits to petroleum-powered boats for two decades, but that could soon change.
The push to reconsider the ordinance follows the passage of Senate Bill 1388, Florida's so-called Boater Freedom Act, which Governor Ron DeSantis signed into law on May 20, 2025 as Chapter 2025-35, taking effect July 1, 2025, according to the Sammis Law Firm. As WKMG first reported, the city's existing ordinance banning gas-powered boats on Lake Gracie now runs headlong into that statute. Section 4 of the bill created Section 327.75 of the Florida Statutes, dubbed the Watercraft Energy Source Freedom Act, which explicitly bars state agencies, counties, municipalities, and other local governments from restricting watercraft use or sale based on the energy source powering them, per the Florida Sea Grant program's review of the legislative session.
City leadership was alerted to the conflict well before the WKMG report surfaced. During a June 19, 2025 Eustis City Commission meeting, the city attorney formally advised commissioners that the ordinance prohibiting petroleum-powered watercraft on Lake Gracie conflicted with the new state law and would require official action, according to the city's own commission agenda documents. Lake Gracie itself is a small, 20-acre spring-fed private body of water within the Ocklawaha River Watershed in Eustis, per the Lake County Water Atlas.
Residents Fear Years of Conservation Work Could Unravel
Residents around the lake told the station that repealing the ordinance could threaten years of work to protect Lake Gracie and its wildlife. For a lake that small, even modest increases in boat traffic and engine noise could represent an outsized disruption to a residential body of water that has operated under petroleum restrictions for two decades.
Eustis isn't alone in confronting this dilemma. Neighboring Lake County Commissioners adopted Ordinance No. 2025-39 in May 2025, repealing long-standing gasoline motorboat bans on Lake Elsie and Blue Lake and lifting motorized boat restrictions in the 770-acre Pine Meadows Conservation Area to comply with the same state preemption, according to Lake County Government records. Those original bans on Lake Elsie and Blue Lake dated back to January 21, 2003, meaning they stood for more than 22 years before state law forced their repeal.
What Regulatory Tools Remain for the City
Even though Eustis can no longer ban specific engine types or fuel sources outright, the city still has some tools left. Local governments retain authority under Florida Statute 327.60 to establish vessel speed limits, such as idle-speed or no-wake zones, and to enforce general engine noise limits under Section 327.65, according to Online Sunshine's statutory text. That means commissioners weighing the fate of the Lake Gracie ordinance could still turn to speed restrictions or noise controls to soften the impact of reopening the lake to gas-powered boats, even without the ability to ban combustion engines altogether.
The state law reaches beyond fuel-source restrictions. SB 1388 also limited when law enforcement can stop or board private vessels, requiring probable cause of a safety violation and reclassifying safety equipment and marine sanitation checks as secondary offenses, per the Florida Sea Grant review. Separately, investigative reporting published in November 2025 found that marine engine manufacturer Yamaha Motor Corp. hired Tallahassee lobbyists to push fuel-neutrality preemption language in SB 1388 as part of a broader national campaign against local combustion-engine restrictions, according to the Substack newsletter Seeking Rents.
Existing Shoreline Protections Stay in Place
Beyond speed and noise rules, Eustis's Land Development Regulations and Comprehensive Plan already set protective standards for waterbodies like Lake Gracie, including a 12-foot cap on dock heights above high water level, a 50-foot wetland buffer line, and mandatory site plan reviews for shoreline structures, according to city planning documents. Those standards remain untouched by the state preemption law, since they govern shoreline construction rather than the fuel source of vessels on the water. For residents worried about what comes next for Lake Gracie, the coming commission decision will determine how the city balances state-mandated compliance against the conservation goals that shaped the original ban two decades ago.
